| NEW BLOG: CONFESSIONS OF A WHITE MALE SINGER-SONGWRITER |
6th March 2008, 8pm |
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CONFESSIONS OF A WHITE MALE SINGER-SONGWRITER
Chapter One: Bad Light Stops Play.
I guess it didn't feel right to start a blog before. Not when I felt great and felt I was playing really well and that the pure light one wants to channel and help others channel was coming through sweet and pure. Who wants to read about that? Or how can you even write it down, except from the vantage of having lost that connection? I've read things I've written when i was ecstatic and they just sound like preposterously arrogant declamations from someone lost in the pleasant birdsong of their own flattered and fluttering ego. But last night...man...what happened? Complete meltdown, that's what. And from there, maybe one can write something worthwhile.
It was the third "Jont and friends" residency at Soho Revue Bar last night...a night I'd set up at the beginning of the year to give me a chance to play regularly in a venue and also to create an event with some of the magic of the Unlit nights I put on in people's houses...a few different people play who I've met or been put in contact with, a varied bill, and I try to create an atmosphere in the room where the artists get the respect for the performance they deserve, where they feel able to open up and play at their best. Guy J Jackson – an incredible surreal short story teller / stand up guy from the 'states who'd played the last Unlit at my flat (www.myspace.com/storytellinguyjj)- and Owen Duff (a myspacer i'd met online the day before who had a beautiful piano song about finsbury Park, www.myspace.com/owenduff) did short sets and then it was down to the main acts I'd asked down to play. Louis Brennan, singer and writer in the band Semaphore (www.myspace.com/semaphore2007) has an incredibly low, weathered voice. His recordings had made me think I was going to meet some grizzled 40-year old, but he was young, bearded, intense and had it going on, drawing us all in to his tales of drink, drugs, love and loss. We know the time honoured tales, but when it feels real, the subject matter doesn't matter, it's just there, in front of you, unfolding itself. Top guy too. He has a residency gig at The Cross Kings coming up (www.thecrosskings.co.uk) soon, so I would go check him out.
Dawn Kinnard (www.myspace.com/dawnkinnard) was up next. A Pennsylvanian, with pink streaks in her strawberry blonde hair, an emotive and untrammeled stage presence, a superlative voice and mike technique (she uses a special neumann condenser mike which she thinks of as her "instrument", and can change the tone of everything she does by how and where she sings in to it), and extraordinarily emotionally precise tunes, sung on a guitar with beautiful accompaniment on piano, led to everyone in the room being transported utterly in to her universe. Martin Terefe, her producer (www.myspace.com/martinterefe) and one of the top producers around at the moment, came down with the band he'd been recording with, and you could sense there were several very supportive souls there, very happy to witness her naturalness and confidence on stage and to be part of what must be an almost unstoppable rise to wider acclaim once her record comes out in a couple of months on Kensaltown Records (www.kensaltownrecords.com). I for one was blown away....it had been a stressful day anyway, second day of giving up smoking, spending all day texting and emailing people about the night, trying to find a stand-in dj, complete the forms for a bank account for Unlit Records and for a pay pal account, and to track down my booking agent and see what progress had been made on the tour he was organising for me in the summer....no time just to play a little, get in the zone, ground myself a bit in MY musical universe so that I could dive in to it when it was my turn to play. My new friend Amanda Extra (www.myspace.com/amandaextra) who had come to the Unlit last Friday and who makes films as well about up and coming bands and puts them up on the 6music site said "Jont, you seem different tonight, a bit stressed, whats wrong?" which I didn't appreciate, cos she was right, but I didn't feel I could do anything about it. I went backstage. The trannies – who perform downstairs on the same night and we share a dressing room with, were getting changed, putting on the make-up and the hotpants. "Hello darling! Lovely to see you...you look gorgeous...", one said, eyebrow raised, face to the mirror. "thanks yeah, good to see you" but my mind was somewhere else. .... My compering job over, it was now my time to play. But how was I gonna play after that? I wanted a cigarette. Louis obliged, laughing at the pathetic end to my two day attempt to give up, and I scrabbled around, putting my jacket on, taking it off, pacing about wishing I didn't feel how I did, but remembering the sensation from times before when I had totally lost my confidence and could hardly get up on stage. Oh christ. Another drink? A cigarette? A spliff? What did I need to get in the zone and do my thing? She'd been the real thing. She'd done what I'd wanted to happen for everyone...that we would all be taken somewhere else, lifted up and spun around. What was there for me to do?
Occasionally I felt like the real thing, occasionally I would feel like the real thing for days and weeks at a time. And now I couldn't think of a single song of mine that I wanted to sing, that would allow me to leave all my doubts and this strange feeling of misery that had arrived like a large cloud over The Oval, as I was facing Glenn McGrath and about to hit the winning runs in the Ashes. He runs in to bowl. The Umpire stops him...."Sorry gentlemen, that is time please, Bad light stops play". No! Not now! Not here....I threw the cigarette out the window, picked up my guitar, and headed out in to the noise of the bar and plugged my guitar in.
And that was that. Couldn't sing great. A sort of croak came out for the first couple of songs. I couldn't move naturally, felt strangely displaced, like a nightmare or a dream where you are performing. Tried as much as I could to get in the zone, tried to do some songs I could completely inhabit, and it worked sporadically. Thought maybe I would be able find the golden thread hold on and let it swing me this way and that like it had last friday, like it had last time I'd played here. But it kept slipping out of my grasp. And I know how transparent you are up there...I watch it in others the whole time. And I know everyone could see me, having a tough time. The crowd, as opposed to becoming galvanised and entranced as would happen when I was ON, just dissipated. Some loyal sweethearts continued to listen but I was a shell of what I could be. When the end came it was a relief. I went backstage and tried to search out the last beer of the rider but someone had nabbed it, so just stole another of Louis' cigarettes and smoked it, glazed over, sweating, essentially traumatised.
Is that a good place to start? I don't know. But it's real. And I know there will be good things to confess too, maybe even by tomorrow. I don't make a habit of putting myself through pain, or at least, no more than the next man. But I know I can learn from it and that it might give you a better idea of what me and my music are about than another blog saying "That was the best gig I've ever done, I am fucking on fire".
Til something else comes up worth relating, I wish you a merry day. I have to go to soundcheck right now for a gig in Stockwell, supporting a guy called David Goo (www.myspace.com/davidgoo). And you know what? I reckon I'm gonna blow them all away!
Love and rollercoasters
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